Nick Xenophon Team senator Skye Kakoschke-Moore has resigned after discovering she was eligible for British citizenship.
Photograph: David Mariuz/AAP

The Nick Xenophon Team senator Skye Kakoschke-Moore will resign from the Senate because she has dual British citizenship by descent through her mother.

At a press conference in Adelaide on Wednesday, Kakoschke-Moore announced she had received advice from the UK Home Office on Friday, confirmed by a specialist barrister, that she had received British citizenship from her mother, who was born in Singapore in 1957.

Kakoschke-Moorehad always believed she was not British because her father had received advice from the British embassy in Omanshe was not eligible for citizenship when she was 12.

She said she was “heartbroken” to discover she was British, which she described as “extremely surprising” because she “had no reason to believe I was a British citizen until that point”.

Kakoschke-Moore explained that her mother was born in Singapore, a former British colony, which gave her “citizenship of the United Kingdom and colonies” and became a British citizen in 1983 when the British Nationality Act came into effect.

Kakoschke-Moore, born in Darwin in 1985, then gained that citizenship by descent.

Kakoschke-Moore said she would request the matter be referred to the high court to determine how the vacancy would be filled, adding she would “continue to run” for the NXT and “at this stage” her ambition was to come back to the Senate.

Australia's dual citizenship crisis

The constitution

Section 44 (i) of Australia's constitution bars "citizens of a foreign power" from serving in parliament, including dual citizens, or those entitled to dual citizenship. But the provision was very rarely raised until July 2017, when the Greens senator Scott Ludlam suddenly announced he was quitting parliament after discovering he had New Zealand citizenship.

That sparked a succession of cases, beginning with Ludlam’s colleague Larissa Waters, as MPs and senators realised their birthplace or the sometimes obscure implications of their parents’ citizenship could put them in breach.

Xenophon clarified that he was not suggesting that Storrer had an office of profit under the crown, as in the case of Hughes, but rather there was “an issue about him not being a member of the party” for some of the time since the 2016 election.

Section 44(1) of the constitution prohibits citizens or subjects of a foreign power from sitting in parliament.

Asked what the citizenship issues demonstrated about NXT’s processes, Xenophon said voters would see that section 44 had “a much broader scope than anyone could have anticipated” and many parties including cabinet ministers had been caught out.

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Xenophon acknowledged Sharkie may be referred to the high court but said she was in a “very strong position” because she had taken reasonable steps to renounce her British citizenship on 19 April, 2016.